In the "well informed" cat community around here, it seems like most people will think you're a bad cat owner if you allow your cat to roam outdoors unsupervised. In the adoption paperwork at the local shelter, they ask you if you plan on letting your cat outdoors and if you say yes, they might not let you adopt a cat. Everything I've read seems to at least very strongly recommend keeping indoor-only cats.

I know that personally, I just feel much better keeping my cats indoors. The pro-indoors arguments are pretty persuasive: they won't get hit by a car, they won't get into fights with other animals, they won't fall prey to natural predators, they're not exposed to as much disease, etc. I've also read that the life expectancy for indoor cats is something like three times longer than that of free-roaming cats.

But I hear about cats who are absolutely miserable being cooped up indoors all the time, no matter how much play time they get. In these cases, it seems cruel to force them to stay indoors.

Oh, heck no! These threads always go bad, mostly because it's common and the norm for people outside of the U.S. to let cats roam. Please use the search or advanced search functions for many, many threads on the indoor/outdoor debate.